The Things We Dont Know

#1 – The Fourth Kind of People

March 6, 2018

Two of the most vocal camps in the conversation about religion are the atheists and the believers. The third kind of people – the kind who are agnostic, or those who suppose that god may or may not exist – are, for the most part, not as loud or as compelled to prove their belief to be right as the other two camps.

But there exists a fourth camp of people – those who do not partake in these conversations – and these are the kind that I consider the luckiest. The people who go about their lives without bothering themselves (or others) with such un-answerables. Their philosophy of life can be vaguely summed up as follows: What do I care about the things that have no impact on my life? I am going to do what I need to do to survive and thrive.

A Model of Geocentricism, Public Domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=313389v

All things considered, It is, a fortune to be born and bred in this camp, because there is so much additional time to live life rather than conjecture what is and what isn’t. It is a fortune because these people inherently know that there are questions to which we don’t have – and may never have – answers. How amazing it is to never be bothered with these questions?

The amount of knowledge we need to gain about our cosmos and our place in this universe is truly great, and any true seeker of knowledge understands how frustrating it is to correlate the brevity of our life with the vastness of this knowledge. Due to the shortness of our life, we will never know everything there is to know. But what if I never wanted to know everything?

This is the fortunate philosophy of the fourth kind of people, and I wish – for a fleeting moment – that I could feel the joy of peace and contentment that comes with this philosophy.

Unfortunately, the rest of us – the kind who are indeed concerned with metaphysical questions about the meaning, purpose, and origin of life – must continue to debate and converse until we learn to live peacefully under the banner of the one cosmos we inhabit.